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E63 / E64 6 Series (2004 - 2010) The E63/E64 BMW 6 Series builds on BMW's sporty heritage with aggressive lines and an incredible motor to back the design up. Available in coupe and convertible trims with a standard 4.8 liter engine producing 360 horsepower and 360 lb-ft of torque, the 6-series is a popular choice that exceeds expectations.

I met a friend via the forum that does coding. I got the cables and software but getting it working is a bear. He came by this week and we used his computer to do some coding on both of my cars with great results. We made a bunch of changes.

The biggest issue for me was getting the angel eyes to be DRLs. We also programmed the flash to be the HIDs.

I had replaced the AE lights with LEDs but getting them to be the DRL gives it a FaceLift look. We also added windows up from key fob, dash lights always on, digital speed on dash and some stuff on the F10 also.

I still need to get brighter LEDs but this was a great upgrade for my 6.

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I Love LA. It lets me ride in the winter with the top down.
07' E64/Black....14' F10/M-Sport White

I've set this up and it is pretty cool to set the blinkers to display in the Head Up Display as well. Roseng, What step in the process is giving you difficulty on your computer. It's nice that you have a friend that already has it setup. I have an 07' so I'm using NCSExpert.

Nice. I have the setup working on my laptop running XP. I find that using XP is much better for the setup. Make sure you get INPA running first if your are using NCExpert. I'm planning on doing a few things like having the turn signals display in the HUD and the folding mirrors. I mostly have it though to diagnose issues when they do arise.

I've set this up and it is pretty cool to set the blinkers to display in the Head Up Display as well. Roseng, What step in the process is giving you difficulty on your computer. It's nice that you have a friend that already has it setup. I have an 07' so I'm using NCSExpert.

I have 2 computers one XP and a Win7 set up. I was getting the same issue on both. I did a full reinstall and it seems I had a corrupted file somewhere. They are both working now.

I am still not comfortable with the read, change file, load routine. I found another program ace near me and we are getting together Friday. I think he may get me over the hump. One issue is that there are not many e63/64s out there and many of the guides are written for e60 so you have to dig a bit deeper.

I think i'm close To success, as the computer and car are talking nicely.

Also the guides are helpful but not written well. They need a lesson in DIY from Yorgi.

Once I get that working and I feel comfortable with NCSExpert, I will try to tackle the f10 programming.

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I Love LA. It lets me ride in the winter with the top down.
07' E64/Black....14' F10/M-Sport White

I have NCS Expert set up along with INPA/DIS, etc. I've made changes to my e36, e39 & e63 & many other cars for friends & members of my local forum. It's actually quite easy once you go through the process a few times. I've even remotely logged in to another forum member's laptop to make a few changes for him. Obviously to do that the software & cables have to be in place.
As for coding bad info? Well if it is really bad the software goes into a fail safe mode & just writes the default build for that module if it detects bad code or blank code. You can cause issues with comms in the car if power dies in the laptop, but writ g a default code clears that up.
I would love to have AE as DRL but I think this option is only possible in LCI models. You should ask your friend to also program Welcome Lights.", you can choose which lights you want on when you unlock your car, this is Different from HomeLights (which can also be coded to work remotely with trunk release button on the key fob, see mine below). Welcome lights are only possible on LCI models too, Homelights work on both pre & post LCI cars.

As for coding bad info? Well if it is really bad the software goes into a fail safe mode & just writes the default build for that module if it detects bad code or blank code. You can cause issues with comms in the car if power dies in the laptop, but writ g a default code clears that up.

This is the 1st I have heard of this? Be careful coding any module. There are just to many nightmares discussed about bricked modules, to believe this?

To be honest the bricked module stories are coming from people who were trying to update their software version with Progman or WinKFP. Coding is just changing parameters of a module to a limited set of options. If you try to change some to "active" instead of "aktiv" see what happens. It won't code as the value will not be accepted. If the laptop dies mid-coding then you can cause comms issues on the CAN bus but you can recover the situation by defaulting all parameters with NCS Expert, there is a procedure for this:

Some say you default a module by writing a blank FSW_PSW.MAN file to the module to default it but this is wrong, what happens is a "fail safe" kicks in (that I referred to earlier) & the parameters of the module are set to default.

I would love to have AE as DRL but I think this option is only possible in LCI models. You should ask your friend to also program Welcome Lights.", you can choose which lights you want on when you unlock your car, this is Different from HomeLights (which can also be coded to work remotely with trunk release button on the key fob, see mine below). Welcome lights are only possible on LCI models too, Homelights work on both pre & post

Roseng Glad to hear you have the car and computer talking. That is pretty much one of the hardest parts, grin. Let us know how it goes once you try the updates. Once you do it a few times it is pretty easy. If you step away from it for a while it takes some refresher time. Make sure you have the car on a charger as well. You don't want the battery going dead on the laptop or the car.

I ended up using the blank FSW_PSW.MAN file to reset all my defaults, whether or not this is by design or as rebel stated activates a failsafe to default codes I don't know, but it did work to reset everything to defaults.

Here is a File I found in one of the forums online, can't remember which one ot give credit too though. This will be handy for understanidng the acronymns used for the Modules.

Roseng Glad to hear you have the car and computer talking. That is pretty much one of the hardest parts, grin. Let us know how it goes once you try the updates. Once you do it a few times it is pretty easy. If you step away from it for a while it takes some refresher time. Make sure you have the car on a charger as well. You don't want the battery going dead on the laptop or the car.

I ended up using the blank FSW_PSW.MAN file to reset all my defaults, whether or not this is by design or as rebel stated activates a failsafe to default codes I don't know, but it did work to reset everything to defaults.

Here is a File I found in one of the forums online, can't remember which one ot give credit too though. This will be handy for understanidng the acronymns used for the Modules.

Have fun.

houbmw-cm,
Thanks for the PDF. I had already found this and many more documents from members that really helpful. Lots of good info but sorting through it is a challenge.

One document let us code the AEs as DRLs. From what I have seen, many of the expert coders did not know you could do this in pre-LCS cars. I found the instructions in a doc from one of the members. Really helpful, really cool.

I plan on a coding session this Friday and hopefully I will get the rest of the process sitting comfortably in my brain. Then I get to try E-SYS for my F10. Woo Hoo!

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I Love LA. It lets me ride in the winter with the top down.
07' E64/Black....14' F10/M-Sport White

A really useful tool to use along side NCS Expert for coding is NCS Dummy created by the use Revtorover on a rival forum, just google NCS Dummy Revtor & you'll find the thread. Revtor is regulary updating the tool adding more info & functionality.

What is NCS Dummy? What does it do?

- First off it acts as a translator
It gives the english translation of each parameter in a module.

- It identifies all the possible settings for each parameter, so no guessing needed
e.g. aktiv/nicht_aktiv, wert_01/wert_02, etc. The options for each parameter are not intuitive as it first seems in some cases, aktiv is not the only opposite of nivht_aktiv, panikalarm is an alternate option in one particular parameter

- You can use it to generate .MAN files for modifying parameters. It has an function with check boxes that you can tick to select desired options rather than spell it incorrectly.

You don't connect to the car with it, it is purely a post-processing tool. You can take FSW_PSW.TRC file that you have read from a module in your car using NCS Expert & run it through NCS Dummy to see what parameters & options are available for that module.

Even without any reading from a car you can see Module Function listings for any module. I have attached to outputs for two E60 light control moules:
- E60-LM_E60.C0E (C0E is the software version, LM2 is light control module 1)
- E60-LM2_E6X.C32 (C32 is the software version, LM2 is light control module 2)

The thread on the tool gives more info than above but I hope it at least gives some idea of the benefit of the tool.
AE as DRL

If you notice in the LM & LM2 files there is an option to have the AE as DRLs in LM2 but not in LM. From LM2, here's the DRL options:
LM2 Extract

Maybe I got confused thinking that only LCI cars could have AE as DRLs, in fact it is only cars with LM2 (light control module version 2) that can have AE as DRL. Earlier cars have LM (LM v1). I'll check mine later today to see (it's a 2006 630i with a build date in 2005 ( MY 09/2005). I'll post my results here.
I hope people find the info on NCS Dummy above useful & intresting. I think NCS Dummy is a must if you're planning on making the most of your coding abilities!

Rebel.Ranter, Yeah NCS Dummy is pretty easy to use to generate the update files. I brought it up a few times to check it out. I had already done all my updates by then though so I did not get to actually apply anything from NCS Dummy. I lost all my updates when they updated my software, so maybe I will use that this weekend to make the changes and add some others. Does anyone know if there is an option to display voltage, like the Digital speed option. I have not looked through all the modules yet to see. That would be a good feature for monitoring some of the electrical oddities with these cars.